Corporation A signed a four-year lease, at the end of which it could exercise a bargain purchase option on the property for $5. It then transferred its leasing agreement to a related corporation (Corporation B), which assumed the balance of the lease obligations and paid Corporation A an amount equal to the $5,000 difference between the value of the property at the time of the transfer ($20,000) and the balance of the obligation (the remaining rental payments valued at $15,000). How should Corporation B treat the amount paid in the transfer? After noting its position that where a lease had a bargain purchase option, a portion of each lease payment was to be treated as allocable to consideration paid for the option and not as deductible rent, CRA stated:
[T]he payment of $5,000 made by Corporation B would, in all likelihood, be attributable to the option to purchase the property, which would constitute the acquisition cost of this option for Corporation B and the proceeds of disposition of this option to Corporation A.